Exhaustion City

Well, it came and went.

Half-way through the day and I felt like I was going to fall over. Parties are a lot of work!

(pictures to follow)

I started to feel sort of under the weather Saturday evening and got progressively worse Sunday. I've just been feeling very achey and tired. My throat's a little sore and it's been sneeze city for me lately too.

I had a small cake to make on Sunday, which I was able to do pretty easily. Yesterday was Rylee's 2 year check up and after dealing with her there, I got home and realized that I'd completely forgotten about a cake I was supposed to make for Tango for today. So, on top of the very elaborate turkey cake I had to start on, I needed to begin another. We ran to the cake shop for some more supplies and to the store for even more supplies. I came home and started working. I worked from about 1pm until 3:30 am. I haven't been that tired in a really, really long time. Thank goodness I had Rodney here to help me. I'd probably still be working on that cake for Tango if he hadn't been here.

Birthday Pics!

The Cake



The cheesecake cups I made!



The Flowers:



The Cookies:



Before the party, blowing up some balloons:







The birthday girl!






One half of the food:



On the menu was:

Italian Lasagna, Mexican Lasagna
Green Salad with choice of black beans, tomatoes, corn salsa, cheese, ranch or italian dressing
cold spinach dip in a bread bowl with wheat thins or tortilla chips
Chocolate Cheesecake Cups
Pecan Sandies
Pomegranate Lemonade
Cookie favors and birthday cake! (a strawberry tier and a vanilla tier)

Opening gifts:



Noah!



Just like Mommy's (works too)



Cake time!



Hannah!



Miles, on one of Rylee's new presents



Bounce house mania!





The party was great. Great people, great talks. A special thanks goes out to Jess, who came over and helped me get everything together and ready! I think this might have been the easiest party we've ever done together! It was also pretty fun doing everything in the new space, made things a lot easier! Rodney was also a pretty big help, he did all of the dishes after the party and worked really hard on the yard the morning of. Oh! And to The Davis family for volunteering their bounce house! What a good time for the kiddos!

Now it's time to start on the NYE party!

Be my little Baby

My baby girl turns two this Saturday.

My baby girl turns two this Saturday!

At this time, two years ago, I was probably at my doctors office getting checked for my high blood pressure. Waiting, hoping and praying that she would come soon.

I can't believe it's been two years and that today my daughter said, "what's wrong mommy? need me kiss you owie? I kiss it. Is okay Mommy? I'll be right back. Two seconds"

She's such an amazing little girl. She's definitely got a lot me in her and it's joy to watch her grow every day. It's a honor to be her mommy!

A quick look back, over the last two years.

Just born































































Happy Birthday (2 days early) Rylo!

Some stupid cheer

What a weekend!

Is it over already?

We managed to get a good amount of stuff done around here, that which I am very thankful for.

This list includes but is not limited to:

Making the tags for the cookie bags
Making the food labels
Preparing each child's take-out style gift box (you'll have to wait for the pictures!)
Deciding the finalfinalfinal menu
Clearing the clutter from the living room
Cleaning up the office/guest room
Wrapping/boxing Rylee's gifts
Putting together this for the girl as well
Hanging the curtain in our room
Putting up and painting the chair rail in Rylee's room and ordering these
for her walls
Painting the trim on the bedroom doors and some of the molding around the floor
Cleaning the baseboards
Caulking the wainscoting in the bathrooms
Working on Rylee's pictures
Dusting the entire house!

We also managed to play some more guitar hero (Lou is ridiculous on any other level besides easy), clean out the fridge, go to dinner with my family, help rodney's dad shop for surround sound, go hobby lobby for various party/cake needs, and go through Rylee's room in order to get rid of some of the things she no longer plays with.

Today Rylee and I went to Target to get the bulk of the grocery shopping out of the way for the party. I have a detailed list of everything I have to get done on each day of this week.

Today's list included:

Grocery shopping - check!
Cookie Dough making - check!
Laundry - check!

I still have some scrubbing to do in Rylee's room :(


There's a lot of work to do but luckily I have an amazing support system in place! My mom is bringing some sweets to the party (which relieves me of making something), Rodney has done EVERYTHING I have asked of him and has gone above and beyond to get things done and Jess is even spending the night on Friday to help! What an awesome guardian she is.



There's so much I want to say right now - so very, very much. There's a lot changing in my life and a lot I'm changing myself.

Once my thoughts have been totally collected, I'll share them here.

Weather the Weather

It's been a while since we last spoke.

My apologies sincerely.

As usual, things have been busy/crazy/hectic around here and it seems like I haven't even had a moment to sleep.

The Dandy Warhols concert was pretty awesome. I'm very glad I decided to go because they are a great band live. I also had to chance to just hang out with the girls and gossip, which was pretty fun in itself. Suzy just so happened to know Court from way back in the day and somehow we ended up back at the hotel, chatting it up with everyone. Fun times.



I spent the rest of the week working on Marissa's cake. You can check it out here.

Early Friday we met up with Leila at Nokia Live. We went to lunch with her, Mikey, Mondo and Paul.

Piled in the back of our CX-7



After lunch we hung out at the venue. They played pretty early that afternoon and we were able to watch them from the 3rd row. I enjoyed seeing them and hanging out with Leila, I just wish I could have had a little more time with her. I never realize how much I miss her sometimes.

Saturday was the shower which Rylee and I attended minus Rodney. (girls only shower) We left for Austin once we were done there, getting into town just as my grandmother had gotten in from San Antonio as well. We had dinner, went by Target and settled in for the night after that.

While in Austin we did a lot of shopping (for Rylee). It was a nice break.

Tuesday Clifford came by and we went out to Northpark so he could buy Rylee's birthday present from Babystyle. He ended up spending a small fortune in there, purchasing her Christmas gift as well. We had to pull into the loading dock to get it all! The ladies in the store were oohing and awwwing over him. They kept saying, "he's an adoring uncle, he loves her so much!"

OH! I went ahead and bought Guitar Hero 3 (for the Wii) for Rodney as an early Christmas gift. Several people (in stores) told me that if I didn't buy it now, I certainly wouldn't be able to get it for Christmas so I made the decision to go ahead and get it. We thought about keeping it put away until Christmas but in the end we decided to break it out anyway.

Can you say addicting? Not only is it addicting, it's REALLY fun. I've only been playing for 2 days but I'm literally dreaming about frets and strumming. We have nine million things to do (before Rylee's birthday next week) but for some reason, all I want to do is play Baracuda (Heart) and Story of My Life (Social Distortion). In my lifetime there have only been 3 games that I have truly loved playing. Super Mario Brothers (on Super NES), Tetris and Mario Kart (for N64). Guitar Hero might get added to that list!

Today is my brother's birthday! Clifford is 23 today. He's working right now but as soon as he gets off, we're all headed to downtown Fort Worth for some Pappadeux's!!



More pics of the kiddo,